Australia Deports French Man Found With Terrorist Material

Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 3:35 am | י"א טבת תשע"ו

SYDNEY (AP) -

Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 3:35 am | י"א טבת תשע"ו

A French national carrying terrorist material was detained at an Australian airport and subsequently deported two days after the deadly attacks in Paris, Australia’s immigration minister revealed on Wednesday.

The man, who had traveled to Australia from the Middle East, was stopped at Melbourne Airport on Nov. 15 and found to be carrying three cans of mace along with terrorist material on his mobile devices, government officials acknowledged, in the wake of a local media report about the incident.

Australian officials liaised with their French counterparts and held the man overnight at an immigration detention center before deporting him to France, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said. “We don’t have any information, as I said, to link it to the Paris attacks, but it is a reminder to us all that there are people there who would seek to do us harm,” Dutton told reporters. He would not say why authorities initially chose to stop the man, or what his motives for being in Australia may have been.

It is not known what French officials did with the man upon his return there.

France has been under a state of emergency since 130 people were killed and hundreds wounded in terrorist attacks on Nov. 13. The Islamic State terror group (IS) claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Australia’s government raised the country’s terror threat level last year, in response to the domestic threat posed by supporters of IS. Since then, police have since conducted dozens of raids aimed at thwarting several local terrorist plots, including an alleged plan to attack government buildings and a naval base in Sydney, Australia’s most populated city.